Take Me To Tomorrowland

Walt Disney Studios

Immersive Website

THE FUTURE AWAITS

Walt Disney Pictures approached us to create a truly next generation website for their original summer film Tomorrowland. The goal was to create an experience that introduced Disney fans to the new property and to further expand the lore of the emerging Tomorrowland universe.

A partnership with Google encouraged pushing the limits of browser technology to deliver a truly immersive, futuristic site experience, not just on desktop, but on mobile and tablet platforms as well.

DO YOU WANNA GO?

As we began to build the world of Tomorrowland, our first challenge was to tease this upcoming site to the core Disney fans. When the first Tomorrowland broadcast teaser aired during Super Bowl XLIX, with millions of eyes on us, we simultaneously live launched a teaser site for Take Me To Tomorrowland.

The teaser site released the first official trailer with special T pin overlaid at key moments. When the pin was tapped, the video instantly switched to unreleased concept artwork, giving fans the first real glimpse of Tomorrowland. A mysterious Nixie Tube countdown clock ticked down to the release of the full site.

BUILDING A WORLD

We knew from the onset that to truly make an immersive, cutting edge site, we would be leaning on WebGL and next generation JS frameworks to create a dynamic, mobile friendly experience.

Collaborating with ILM, we created skybox environments that showcased the world of Tomorrowland, and took some of the high resolution ship models from the film and turned them into lower-poly, browser friendly crafts to buzz through our skyboxes. We created the dynamic wheat field landing to the site using key-art from the one-sheet poster and programmatic animated stalks blowing in the wind.

As a takeaway for the site, we created a self-keying photo feature, that placed the users directly into a Tomorrowland environment as a type of digital postcard.

THE GAME OF TOMORROW

We created, Fusion, an original game to incorporate into the site to pair with a sweepstakes that allowed lucky fans to attend the Tomorrowland premiere. A daily game session allowed the user to enter the sweepstakes once each day.

The game piece artwork was inspired by the Platonic Solids, a nod to the importance of mathematics and science to the Tomorrowland universe. All of the 3D game pieces are generated procedurally through WebGL, creating a lightweight, scalable, mobile friendly game.

Fusion is deceptively simple, the goal to link strings of adjacent geometric objects, but skilled players can extend the countdown clock by running chains of combinations through the center multiplier. The game also ties into the Google Games API, with a three tier achievement system to encourage deeper dives and sticky replayability.

REMEMBER THE FUTURE

To contribute to the backstory of Tomorrowland, we collaborated on scripts with director Brad Bird and writer Damon Lindelof to incorporate into the site. Raffey Cassidy recorded voiceovers, in her Athena character, that served as the welcoming to each environment.

Within the content for the site, we pulled from the Disney archives to include actual blueprints for “It’s A Small World” and actual promos for the 1966 World Fair, items that blend into the lore for how and why Tomorrowland was created.

A more hidden “Hall of Plus Ultra” location in the site provided backstory to the shrouded Plus Ultra organization, hinting at the origins of Tomorrowland, and the mysterious decline of the futuristic civilization.

AWARDING INNOVATION

Take Me To Tomorrowland has won multiple awards, including FWA site of the Day, Awwwards Site of the Day, and a Davey Award for outstanding website.

The site was prominently featured on Google Talk Forum with Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof.